Supernatural interpretation of dreams:

Oneiromancy is the art of divination by interpreting dreams. In the Bible people such as Joseph and Daniel are given the ability to interpret dreams by Yahweh. Others such as Jacob and Saint Joseph the husband of Mary are given divinely inspired dreams. Many Christians to this day are given dreams they believe are sent by God, often this can be a factor in conversion from another religion. Some people even believe the material and physical world are an illusion, and dreams are reality.

Psychodynamic interpretation of dreams:

In his book, "The Interpretation of Dreams", Sigmund Freud argued that dream content was unconscious "wish fulfilment". These desires came from the "id", the childlike portion of the unconscious, and as such often contained material that would be unacceptable to the ego. For this reason, dreams were often disguised, and only by understanding the symbolism of the dream can you discover the true meaning. Freud used dream interpretation often to treat his patients, and called dreams "The royal road to the unconscious". Critics would point out that this hypothesis cannot explain nightmares, though many case studies, such as the "Ratman", show this method to be successful.

Archetypes:

The idea of Archetypes was first coined by Carl Jung, who believed in a "collective unconscious", an unconcious layer that was common to all humanity. Archetypes are recurring themes and images that we all have. In his own words, they are "mythological motifs". One example is the old man, who represents wisdom. One is the shadow, that represents all that we fear and dislike about ourselves. Others include:

1. The "hero",
2. The "trickster",
3. The "great mother",
4. The "anima",
5. The "animus",
6. The "omnipotent",
7. The "Divine couple",
8. The "child",

and more. These are universal themes, ideas that we all relate to, and thus they crop up commonly in dreams. They can also be found in religion and mythology. For example, the norse god Loki is an example of "the trickster". Often the Earth is seen as "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature". Archetypes even penetrate contempory film and stories. Wise old men feature prominently in the martial arts genre of films, and Bugs Bunny could easily be another example of the trickster. These Archetypes appear mostly in our "grand" dreams, which are dreams that are longer or more epic than usual. These dreams will stay in the memory for longer periods of time.

More theories

There are hundreds of theories that attempt to explain dreaming. Aside from Freud's psychodynamic explanation and the activation-synthesis theory (both described above), another theory is Francis Crick and G. Mitchinson's "Reverse learning theory", adumbrated on in their piece 'The function of dream sleep'. The basic hypothesis of this view is that the brain sorts through the day's information and uses dreams to rid the mind of unwanted information. 'Parasitic' memories result from the vast and various amounts of information we consume that we our memory is the recipient of. Delusions, and other disturbances are expelled through dreaming. As a consequence, Crick & Mitchinson stated that 'we dream to forget', and reverse learning disburses information through dreaming, and revitalises the dreamer by making certain memories more significant, since there is no more existing erroneous or anomalous information to check through. This theory predicts that lack of REM sleep would lead to hallucinations, and interestingly, case studies such as that of Peter Tripp seem to concur with this view. This also explains why we find it hard to recall our dreams. However, it also predicts that dream recall will lead to dysfunction, and there is much empirical evidence to suggest that this is not so.

Cartwright's "Problem Solving Theory" simply states that we are sorting out information that is useful for our immediate survival. As such, our dreams should be able to give us useful insights into how to solve problems. In this theory, a recurring dream is an example of an unsolved problem. Some people will actively ask for a dream regarding a particular problem before they fall asleep.

Lucid dreaming:

Researchers often define lucid dreaming as simply "being aware in a dream that one is dreaming". Many others define a lucid dream as a dream in which the dreamer has full awareness that the situation he is in is a construct of his mind, and thus can analyse the situation logically and react accordingly. Such full awareness adds numerous extra abilities to the dreamer. The dreamer usually has control of the direction of the dream and can thus explore the dream world. This control is particularly helpful during nightmares, when the dream self can turn round and face the attacker to confront or destroy it. When lucid, the dreamer usually has direct control of the dream environment, and hence can do things impossible in real life, such as making new objects appear, polymorphing, or flying. Lucid dreams can occur spontaneously, especially during youth, but for lucid dreams to occur more frequently, dedication and practice is almost always necessary.

Lucid dreams can be categorized into Dream-Initiated Lucid Dreams (DILDs) and Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs). DILDs start as non-lucid dreams, but at some point in the dream the dreamer realizes they are dreaming. In a WILD, conscious logic and reasoning is preserved while the dreamer transitions from waking to dreaming, and the dreamer is lucid from the beginning of the dream. These uses of "WILD" and "DILD" have mostly fallen into disuse (or rather they mostly never came into use), though "WILD" is often used to refer to any technique in general that happens to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream, by moving directly from conscious wakefulness to conscious dreaming.

Lucid dreamers are those who practice lucid dreaming frequently for personal or spiritual gain. They usually induce lucid dreams through the use of one of many induction techniques. A common technique, known as MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) and developed by Stephen LaBerge, consists of remembering to recognize that they are dreaming the next time they have a dream.

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